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The Story of Season 1

When I started recording the podcast in early 2013, my goal was to have guests open up about their relationships with food in general, including their weird eating habits and (sub-clinically) disordered thinking around food.

I didn't specifically seek out guests who had histories of full-blown eating disorders or significantly disordered eating, and I certainly didn't have the laser focus on eating disorder recovery and body positivity that I do today.

Instead, my guests were people with interesting jobs related in some way to either food or entertainment—chefs, comedians, actors, writers, etc. I selected guests for their ability to speak candidly and humorously about their relationships with food, in the hopes of de-stigmatizing food issues and reducing shame for listeners.

I'd been inspired by listening to comedians' podcasts, like WTF with Marc Maron and You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, where both hosts and guests threw open the doors and aired out their shame in many areas of life, including their relationships with food. And in what seemed like a dream come true for a new podcaster, I actually met Marc Maron at the 2013 LA Podcast Festival and got to record an episode with him just a few weeks after Food Psych's launch. It seemed like talking about food with funny people was going to be my niche.

But even though I didn't specifically aim to focus on eating disorders in the podcast, the focus found me—starting with Episode 13.

That was the episode where I publicly revealed for the first time that I'd had an eating disorder in my early-to-mid-20s, and it got me thinking a lot about how that experience had shaped my career path. Soon after recording that episode, I decided I wanted to explore specializing in nutrition therapy for eating disorders, and I signed on to train at Balance Eating Disorder Treatment Center. I also started getting more and more emails from listeners who were finding the podcast helpful in their own journeys toward eating disorder recovery.

The rest, as they say, is history. By the time I launched my nutrition therapy private practice in early 2014, I was busy making plans to take the podcast in a new direction, focusing specifically on eating disorder recovery. Then, in Season 3, I refined the focus further to what it is today: body positivity, Health at Every Size, and intuitive eating, still with an overall pro-recovery message.

I’ve learned so much since Food Psych's early days, and in these archives you’ll probably hear some places where my understanding of nutrition, eating disorders, and body image has evolved since I made these episodes. I'm so grateful for how the podcast has helped me grow and change, and to you for helping make it possible (because without my loyal listeners, who knows where Food Psych would be!).

While many of these episodes have been edited to remove overtly triggering material, listener discretion is still advised due to some guests' discussions of ongoing eating issues. Also please note that some episodes are no longer available, hence the occasional jumps between episode numbers.

I hope you enjoy the archives below, and I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!

Season 1 of Food Psych is available exclusively to Food Psych Premium members.

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